« All From Quotes · Milan Kundera's Page
From Quotes by Milan Kundera
- Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To…
- The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day,…
- Speed is the form of ecstasy the technical revolution has bestowed on man. As opposed to a motorcyclist, the runner is always present in his…
- Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has…
- Jealousy isn't a pleasant quality, but if it isn't overdone (and if it's combined with modesty), apart from its inconvenience there's even something touching about…
- The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything....The novelist teaches…
- This symmetrical composition--the same motif at the beginning and at the end--may seem quite "novelistic" to you, and I am willing to agree, but only…
- In the political jargon of those days, the word "intellectual" was an insult. It indicated someone who did not understand life and was cut off…
- From the top of the staircase she sees the London train, modern and elegant, and she tells herself again: Whether it's good luck or bad…
- ...[P]eople who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all... (p.24)
- We are born one time only, we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from the previous one. We leave…
- He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely…
- Art arises from sources other than logic." (p.32)
- The phrase "It's absolutely the same with me, I..." seems to be an approving echo, a way of continuing the other's thought, but that is…
- ...in our time art is encrusted with a noisy, opaque, logorrhea of theory that prevents a work from coming into direct, media free, non-interpreted contact…
- In Tereza’s eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her:…
- What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes…
- Laughter, on the other hand, " Petrarch went on, "is an explosion that tears us away from the world and throws us back into our…
- No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise.…
- Remembering now all those farewells (fake farewells, worked-up farewells), Irena thinks: a person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn’t expect much from her re-unions.
- How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is…
- The word change, so dear to our Europe, has been given a new meaning: it no longer means a new stage of coherent development (as…
- This is the image from which he was born...... Characters are not born, like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence,…
More From Quotes
- Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise. — Hannah Arendt
- By its very nature the beautiful is isolated from everything else. From beauty no road leads to reality. — Hannah Arendt
- No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has… — Hannah Arendt
- Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in… — Hannah Arendt
- Aside from a handful of guys boxing is missing the good trainers, that's why our sport is so in the air now… — Alexis Arguello
- From heresy, frenzy and jealousy, good Lord deliver me. — Ludovico Ariosto
- As far as we are concerned, we are ready to leave today, tomorrow, at any time, to join the people of Haiti,… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- Haiti, Haiti, the further I am from you, the less I breathe. Haiti, I love you, and I will love you always.… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- In 1994, when I went back to Haiti from exile, we established a Commission for Truth and Justice and Reconciliation. I passed… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- Sometimes people who want to understand Haiti from a political perspective may be missing part of the picture. They also need to… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of… — Aristophanes
- At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. — Aristotle